Does he notice that I fold his towels in a sweet way? That I use natural laundry soap and make him take his vitamins and pay up for the all-natural body wash to keep him healthy and away from crummy chemicals? Does he notice that I sneak glances at his 15-year-old self, trying to drink…
Category: Motherhood
Hurricanes and gentle breezes
My eldest son blew through me like a hurricane for nine long months, intent on getting to his final destination—which was, namely, anywhere outside of my body. Not one to be easily confined, he clued me in early to his preferences. Sick for roughly eight of those nine months, I wondered what had overcome me….
No surprise
He keeps surprising himself over and over again. Befuddled by his own success. While I sit quietly on the sidelines, not surprised at all. My youngest, a bit of an Eeyore with a mother who channels a lot of Tigger, generally underestimates himself at every turn. Growing up with an older brother who was not…
Raising a warrior
My hair stylist is a tough man of few words. But he has opened up as he has gotten to know me. Today, he is a chatterbox. I have just introduced him to the enneagram when this tatted up, ponytailed tough guy tells me he is certain he would be some sort of warrior type….
What we keep
When my mother died, her daughters had the unenviable task of going through her things. It was something my father would not really have been up to, even though when she was alive he itched to help her purge things around the house. Oh, the irony. Mom kept things more than she threw them away….
A barn burner
We absorb what our parents show us, deep in our cells, unknowingly. Even as we fight, as teens, to be anything but them, their love seeps into our bones—the very marrow–changing us. Some of those changes appear as is, others are stored for future us, tempered in our cells with time. It must be hard…
Drinking fountains, circa 2012
I started this blog in late 2012. I was reeling from a soon-to-be consummated divorce and the recent deaths of my mother and father. I was working more marketing and writing jobs than you could shake a stick at, trying to keep my boys in their house and their school. I was also in the…
A shout-out from the Queen of Onomatopoeia
Slam. Stomp, stomp, stomp. Clap clap. “Hellooooo all!” And I make my entrance. That’s a lot of hullaballoo for an entrance into my own family room, right? But we’ve entered the teenaged years. The teenaged-with–girlfriend years. Oy. I find myself going up and down my stairs enough for it to qualify as aerobic activity. As…
Up, up and away
At a certain point in my motherhood journey, I stood holding a balloon bouquet so large that I could not see my children through it. A metaphorical bouquet, mind you. Picture little ‘ole me holding a boatload of balloons in my arms. Emblazoned on each balloon was an expectation or wish for my children. Over…
Hell hath no fury . . .
. . . like a mama scorned. I’m not sure I’ve introduced most of you to my alter ego, Cuckoo Mommy. In recent years, I’ve banished her for the most part. She tends to overreact, extrapolate too far into the future and generally worry about things beyond her control. Sound familiar? Any of you with…
